As the Rutgers football team began preparation for tonight’s nationally televised season finale against Louisville, Steve Beauharnais found inspiration from an unlikely source: the Scarlet Knights scout team.

Ka’Lial Glaud thinks less these days, a natural byproduct of settling in at defensive end. Conventional wisdom says the 6-foot-2, 230-pound senior has no business along the defensive line, and initially Glaud thought so, as well.

PITTSBURGH — Steve Beauharnais sat alone at his locker Saturday, his head buried in his hands and his pads still on. The world around the Rutgers football team’s senior linebacker flickered by — managers filing away equipment, hushed teammates changing clothes and a scramble to the team’s return flight ensuing.

Benny Merrell always told one of his sons, Jamil, to never approach anything without giving his best effort. He never tolerated quitting in the family’s Bear, Del., home, and that was the way he raised Jamil Merrell, now a junior defensive tackle for the Rutgers football team.

Dane Miller had seen the problems persist before. So when they resurfaced in the Rutgers men’s basketball team’s season-opening loss Friday to St. Peter’s, the senior wing knew it would take more than head coach Mike Rice to solve them.

Wally Judge lumbers across the hardwood at the Louis Brown Athletic Center. It is late — really late. But it always is when Judge pays visits, which have grown in frequency since he joined the Rutgers men’s basketball team May 9.

Brandon Triche swears he was open, but the play was Dane Miller’s to make. As a high school kid on New York’s Upstate Elite, Miller sized up a defender from a Texas AAU team, crossed him over and met what Miller estimates a 6-foot-11 center at the rim.

Junior guard Mike Poole has never seen anyone take more charges in preseason practice than new teammate Vincent Garrett. Garrett, who joined the Rutgers men’s basketball team from Lee (Texas) Junior College, said it is something he has always done.